Central American Trade Pact with Farmers

A man who must do everything by hand with a machete or knife, Mr. Elizondo depends on selling about 50 pigs a year to finance the rest of his tiny operation. He says he can never compete with the large mechanized meat producers from the United States that are expected to invade the market over the next 20 years if Costa Rica's legislature approves the accord. "Without selling the pigs, I don't know how to survive," he said as he fed plantains to his swine. "I can't support myself. I will have to sell this. Who is going to buy it? Not another Costa Rican. It will be a multinational corporation." The Central America Free Trade Agreement, known as Cafta, was barely passed by Congress in late July after President Bush put on a masterly display of logrolling and arm-twisting. But even in this region the agreement is far from a done deal. It has become a toxic political issue here in Central America's richest economy as well as in several others, including countries where the pact has already passed the legislatures. Mr. Bush argues that the deal will shore up political stability in the region and reduce a $2.3 billion deficit with the countries involved. But negotiators for the region did not have enough leverage to pry many concessions from the United States, critics and even some supporters said. A high-ranking Costa Rican official, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of offending his American counterparts, said the implicit threat was that temporary trade preferences enjoyed under old agreements would not be renewed. Central American countries had to get on board with the new pact or risk watching their exports dwindle. United States trade officials say they argued that a permanent agreement was a better deal for smaller countries than the two-decade-old, one-way trade preferences that could disappear at the whim of Congress. But they did not dispute that reluctance to extend the preferences past 2008 might have spurred countries to join the new pact. "If a country chooses not to ratify Cafta and open its markets to U.S. goods and services, it should not automatically assume that Congress would continue to provide it preferential one-way access into the U.S. market," said Neena Moorjani, a spokeswoman for the United States trade representative, Rob Portman. As such, the treaty has divided Costa Ricans and others in the region, with people both for and against it now warning of impending doom if they do not get their way. If the pact is approved, small farmers like Mr. Elizondo say they will be wiped out. If it is not, Costa Rican manufacturers like Luis Gamboa, whose factory produces stoves and refrigerators, say they may move to another country. Labor leaders threaten strikes and scream that the treaty will force public-sector layoffs and drive up health care costs. Flower growers say they will go out of business without it. The accord arouses such passions that the Costa Rican president, Abel Pacheco, dismissed all the negotiators and postponed sending it to the legislature for nearly 18 months. Most political analysts say he plans to let the next president deal with the issue, which is already defining the presidential race this winter. Alberto Trejos, the former trade minister, negotiated the deal for Costa Rica and then resigned last year in protest, saying the president lacked the stomach to face down the unions here. "The president and government have at this late stage of their administration lost the nerve for a big fight," he said in an interview. Nor have Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic passed the accord yet, for similar reasons. Even in Guatemala, where the legislature did approve the agreement, there were violent demonstrations against it. In El Salvador, one of the United States' closest allies, health care workers marched to protest the pact before it passed.